This disclosure relates generally to sharing information among devices, and particularly to sharing display and editing control of a document in a native application.
Content management systems permit devices to synchronize content items with the content management system and other devices. A device stores a local copy of content items. When content items are added, deleted, and edited on a device, these modifications are sent to the content management system for storage and synchronization with other devices. To interact with a content item, users typically execute a native application on the device to view and modify the content item. Modifications to a content item may be synchronized with the content management system separately from the execution of the native application. Accordingly, multiple devices may separately view and edit a particular content item. When users each modify the same content item, versioning problems may arise from conflicting edits. In part, these conflicts arise because users are not aware that other users are modifying the contact item in parallel. In some content management system implementations, users of devices sharing content items can be made aware of each other's interactions with shared items on their respective devices. However, a user still cannot see the changes made by other users until a content item is reloaded. This leads to inefficiencies when multiple users want to edit a content item at the same time.